


A Date with Becca

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Denmark Street musings [36]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: Seeing as Tom Edge gifted us Strike seeing Robin dressed as Bobbi/Becca, this happened.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Series: Denmark Street musings [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1035698
Comments: 24
Kudos: 65





	A Date with Becca

**Author's Note:**

> Set approximately twenty minutes into episode three of Lethal White...

Strike is regretting the impulse long before they’ve reached the Tottenham. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to even ask her what she was doing this evening, let alone then call her back to suggest a drink, mumbling something idiotic about helping her with her revision. Sure, he remembers the goth phase in the eighties, although it wasn’t really his thing - Ilsa had dyed her hair black one summer and worn handfuls of silver rings and a black top with studs on that she was inordinately proud of at the time, and declared her undying love for Adam Ant, but she had scowled when he’d grinned at her efforts and soon given up.

He tells himself as they stroll that it was the camaraderie, Robin’s smile. They’ve been so...distant this past year, and he hadn’t realised just how much he had missed her until they started the Chiswell case. The friendship that had shown a hint of itself when she teased him about hiring Barclay has been slowly creeping back between them, as though some layer of invisible ice is beginning to thaw. And then suddenly she’d appeared in his office in this incredible getup, reminding him all over again how very good she is at this job, at the disguises, at persuading people to trust her. A rush of fondness had overcome him; it was that, combined with their sudden rapport this evening, that had prompted his sudden suggestion, he assures himself.

But there’s something about Robin as Becca that just— Well. He doesn’t want to analyse the way he feels too closely, because he doesn’t go there. This is territory they don’t venture into, feelings he puts carefully into a box and doesn’t think about. The surge of heat that ran through him at the sight of her is an unwelcome return of feelings he thought he had successfully put a lid on some time ago.

So he’s already ruing his wayward mouth that has got him into this predicament, buying a white wine for “Becca” and a pint for himself and carrying them slowly across to the table she’s bagged. It’s a quiet evening, early, and there isn’t much chatter or atmosphere in the pub yet. He sits, and she thanks him for her drink, and an awkward silence descends.

When did they last do this? They’d had reasonably regular lunches or swift evening pints during the Quine and Shacklewell Ripper cases, but in the stilted aftermath of Robin’s wedding, when he had been so unreasonably furious with her for sticking with her marriage and furious with himself for being furious about it, all that had stopped. The hug, so long unmentioned that he wonders if she even remembers it, might never have happened. They have been cool, professional, since. And now here they are, sat at a table in the Tottenham with a white wine and a pint between them, and it’s _weird_. It’s an echo of a friendship they once nearly had.

The silence has stretched too long already. Robin is picking at the edge of her beer mat.

“So what band goes with the Cure, for Becca?” he forces himself to ask, cheerfully. “Something else older? Or something more modern?”

Robin chuckles. “Isn’t ‘modern goth’ an oxymoron?”

“I thought you were aiming for ‘harmless and not that smart’?” Strike teases, grinning. “You can’t use words like oxymoron if that’s what you’re trying to convey.”

She grins back, and for a moment it’s easy again, friendly. “I suppose not.”

“So, the hair,” he hears himself say. “That’s way longer than your normal hair. Is it a wig?”

“No, it’s hair chalk and extensions,” she replies. “Look.” She sweeps a hand under her hair at the back and tips her head forward, and he can see hints of her rose gold at the roots, the clips holding the extensions further up.

“That must have taken ages to do,” he remarks, trying not to look at the elegant column of her neck, trying not to wonder how soft the skin at her nape is. Telling himself he didn’t just get a waft of her perfume that made his heart lurch in a way that definitely isn’t longing. Telling himself that that studded choker isn’t one of the sexiest things he’s ever seen. Apart from maybe the fishnet tights—

 _Fuck’s sake, Strike._ As if it isn’t enough that he’s got Lorelei ringing him all the time, making him feel as though he’s avoiding her when really he just needs some bloody space to _think_ as soon as this case is taking up less of his focus. As if he hasn’t got a constant, uncomfortable feeling that Charlotte is back on the periphery of his vision, waiting in the wings, ready to pounce. And yet here he is, struggling with his feelings for Robin, angry that he feels so drawn to her, to Venetia (those brown eyes, inches from his as she wiped the blood from his forehead), to Becca (those pouty lips sassing him about Cure songs).

“Yeah, it did,” she replies, flicking her hair back over. “And the make-up. Being a goth requires a level of effort.”

He’s looking at her face now, at her heavily made-up eyes, her mouth, pretending to study them out of interest. “How do you do that with your eyes?” he marvels.

Pink-cheeked, she ducks her head a little. “All girls practise smoky eyes when they’re young,” she assures him. “This is just...more. And blacker. And then more again.” She grins.

“I’m impressed,” he says, sitting back and taking a swig of his pint. He finds himself wondering what Matthew thinks. Maybe he thinks it’s sexy, too. Maybe this is why Robin is so good at role play. Maybe they—

He clears his throat, dragging his errant thoughts back from a train of thought that can only shatter his already fragile equilibrium even further.

“How’s Lorelei?” Robin asks, and it startles him. She doesn’t tend to ask, and he’s shut down most attempts to discuss his girlfriend and carefully never asks about Robin’s husband. He’s always kept work and Lorelei separate, but now he wonders if Robin has somehow sensed he’s barely seen her since he left her flat over two weeks ago. He really must call her.

“She’s all right,” he mutters, with a sense of shame he can’t quite put his finger on, and casts about for another topic to change the subject. He can’t ask about her anniversary again without bringing up that dreadful weekend, a subject he doesn’t want to return to. He can’t ask about her upcoming meeting with Raff - he’d nearly given his jealousy away earlier, but something in him baulks at the way Robin talks about the ridiculously handsome young man, at how her voice softens—

Work is the only safe topic these days. “If Aamir wasn’t at the Winns’ on the thirteenth, what else might they be lying about?”

If Robin notices his clumsy attempt to drag the conversation away from the personal, she gives no sign, and they discuss the case while they finish their drinks. In the back of his mind, Strike desperately wants to find a way around the barrier between them, if for no other reason than to ask Robin if she’s all right. Her dedication to the job is second to none as always, but she’s not been right since her wedding, and he’s sure there’s more going on than just the distance between them. Is her idiot husband trying to make her leave the agency? Is she pregnant and wishing she didn’t have to carry out the more dangerous aspects of the job (the glass of wine would suggest not)? Or is she, as he fears, struggling with the job itself, with the attacks she’s suffered, with her history— He knows what it’s like to spend years pretending you aren’t suffering the lingering aftereffects of trauma, and failing. He wishes they were close enough that he could ask her, tell her she’s not alone.

They discuss the case.

To his astonishment, she suggests a second drink, and goes to fetch the next round without so much as a raised eyebrow at his ungracious “yeah, all right”. Maybe this evening doesn’t feel as stilted and awkward to her as it does to him.

_Maybe she doesn’t want to go home._

It’s not the first time he’s thought it. For someone who used to scurry away on the dot of five, and be found sitting on the stairs whispering placatory entreaties into her mobile if he needed her to work late, she’s spent a lot of time lately lingering in the office, volunteering for evening work. He tells himself it’s because she knows it’s expected of a partner, but she’s around more and more. And his brain won’t stop going over and over how she was at her housewarming party, refusing to discuss the house that Vanessa had let slip was only rented, making sure to point out that the braying idiots she was trotting about serving cheese to were Matthew’s friends, not hers - though Strike had hardly needed to be told that.

As the second drinks start to go down, they relax a little. Robin is telling him about the things she sells in the shop as Becca, knowing he will feel as scathingly as she does about dream catchers and healing crystals. He laughs as she describes the customer who was searching for a very specific combination of stones on a bracelet to cure her arthritis, and had been apparently trekking all across town trying to find what she wanted.

Robin lets her guard down a little as the second glass of wine takes effect, her gaze lingering on him more, and he finds himself drawn in by those heavy, smoky eyes, by the dark painted lips that he’s trying not to look at. For a few fanciful minutes, it feels safe to relax too, even to flirt a little, as though he can imagine that this is indeed goth Becca, and not his work partner Robin for whom his feelings are too complicated to be properly understood.

For a few minutes he forgets about the annoying case, about Lorelei, about Charlotte, about the worries of the business - sure, they have plenty of work now, but the wage bills are going to be astronomical this month even without a secretary, and they really must find one, the admin is piling up - and he just enjoys himself. Here, in a pub, with a pint and good company. The conversation ebbs, and she’s grinning at him, and behind what is frankly, attractive though it is, way too much makeup, she’s just as beautiful as always.

His mobile rings, breaking into what had been about to become a lingering gaze. Flustered, Robin looks away, picks up her glass to drain the dregs, while Strike fumbles his phone from his pocket.

Lorelei. With a lurch in his stomach, he remembers he’s supposed to be in a restaurant near her house. He’s forgotten. Again.

“Shit!” He swears before he can think to stop himself. He hesitates, then swipes to reject the call. It’s not going to be a pleasant one - this is the second time he’s stood his supposed girlfriend up, and it’s not a conversation he wants to have in front of Robin.

“What’s up?”

Strike sighs. The moment between them is broken, formality has reasserted itself. “Late for dinner,” he explains. Maybe he can still make it, say he was on surveillance...

Robin is already gathering up her bag. “I’d better be going anyway,” she mutters. “Matt will be wondering where I am.”

_Maybe he won’t mind when he sees the outfit._

_Stop it!_ Strike drains the rest of his pint and sets his glass down harder than he intended, angry with himself, angry with life, angry with people’s expectations of other people—

Robin is standing, lingering while Strike manoeuvres himself out from behind the table, stiff. His knee, although much better than it was before, is still uncooperative when he has been sitting for a while. This also makes him angry, her witnessing him struggle. He wishes she would just leave, and he doesn’t want her to go.

Robin dumps their glasses back on the bar and they head for the door. She’s going across the road and down into the Tube, and he should go with her, see her on her way home to her husband and take the opposite train towards Lorelei’s.

Instead he bids her goodnight and heads home, via the Tesco Metro for a microwave meal and another packet of cigarettes. His evening will be better spent on the case, the mood he’s in.

At least, this is the lie he tells himself, knowing full well that there’s half a bottle of whisky in the cupboard and a football highlights programme on the telly.


End file.
